


My Smile, Your Name

by uumuu



Series: Butterfly Nest [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Creepy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 09:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Míriel confronts an enemy and starts a new tapestry, using very special thread.





	My Smile, Your Name

“Well met,” the woman said quietly, standing with her hands clasped together before him.

She was short, even for an elf, and her silver hair trailed behind her in waves which were swallowed by the darkness that surrounded them both. Her bare feet peeked out from the hem of her dress, black but lined with silver where the fabric wasn't drowned in a riotous pattern of butterflies and moths. Her skin was almost the same colour as her hair. Her paleness was unnatural, as if someone had deliberately drained all pigments from it, or as if it were made of ash. The weirdest thing about her, however, was that she looked to be pregnant. 

“Where are the Valar?” he asked, puzzled as to why this elf-woman should be the one to meet him after his demise.

The woman turned and the swell of her womb became even more obvious. “The Valar aren't here. I had a bit of a...disagreement with them. These aren't exactly the Halls of the Dead, you see. But maybe you would have preferred to wake up there? No doubt, if you were allowed to plead with them, the Valar would fall for your lies even now.”

She took a few carefully measured steps and sat on a high stool. Though her movements were slow, ponderous, she didn't falter even when she hoisted herself up on the stool. Her pregnancy seemed to strengthen her more than it hindered her. She arranged her hair behind her, freeing it from where it had been caught in the folds of her dress or the frame of stool, and again clasped her hands before her. 

“You enjoyed torturing my grandson, did you not?” she asked, conversationally. “And hundreds of others besides. You always sought to prolong their agony to further your amusement.”

He didn't reply. The woman wasn't even looking at him, and it was clear from her tone that she wouldn't have believed him if he denied the truth.

“You planned a slow, excruciating death for my great-grandson too, if I had not taken him first.”

“Your great-grandson?”

“My great-grandson. You surely haven't forgotten him,” the woman rejoined, her voice suddenly sharp.

He considered in silence for a while. This woman did indeed remind him of someone he had known. One of his most eminent victims, judging by her words, not one of the faceless elves whose torments had been more meaningful than their lives. If he had been in full possession of his power, if his ring had not been destroyed, he wouldn't have been so confused, and he would have been able to pay this foolish woman the sort of attention she deserved.

“What to do you want from me?”

The woman turned in his direction, but only for an instant, the time it took to level a smirk at him, challenging.

“Behold,” she said then, extending one hand towards a set of warps fixed to a large loom in front of her. Empty bobbins dangled from the frame. He hadn't noticed if before. He could have sworn it wasn't there until she pointed to it. “The backbone for my new tapestry. I plan to make it the best I have woven to date. It shall depict your ruin, and you shall provide the thread to weave it.”

“Me?”

“You are a Maia, are you not? Your spirit should provide enough thread to fill these warps, methinks. Although...you are in fact quite diminished. Ah, but not to worry. If your essence isn't enough, we will find something suitable to complement it. Right, little one?” she said, putting a hand on her womb. As she did, and smiled, specks of fire shone through her, veins of light which coursed beneath her translucent skin and gave a new radiance to her ashen face.

Then it all made sense.

“Míriel.” Realisation and outrage mingled in the name.“The Therindë.”

A host of moths and butterflies took flight from Míriel's dress and swam across the darkness. Before he knew it, they had all landed on him and trapped him. Large, colourful moths sucked thin filaments out of the incorporeal substance of his being, and he watched them carry those threads towards the bobbins.

Míriel Therindë watched too, once again calmly sitting with her hands clasped together, nodding as the bobbins came alive with colour.

“I trapped Námo and Vairë in a tapestry too, once, but they broke free eventually. It caused me some problems. Luckily my grandsons were already with me then, and I had already become one with the moths.”

She clearly did not know her place, this insolent grandmother of Maedhros and great-grandmother of Celebrimbor. Námo and Vairë may have put up with her, be he would not. He wished to hit her, and did hit her.

She broke apart, like a porcelain doll. Only, she was still sitting there on the stool, too, as if nothing had happened, looking intently on as bobbin after bobbin was filled with thread. It was merely her outer layer which had shattered, and from every shard and tiniest mote of her broken chrysalis new butterflies and moths arose, hovering all round her.

She laughed, jubilant. “See, you do still have some power in you. Your spirit shall be enough for my tapestry. It shall!” 

She unclasped her hands, her movement brisk now, and reached for the bobbins. The moment she touched them fire crept up the threads and pierced through him, taking root in him, spreading until he didn't know where he ended and the threads began. Until it was clear he would never get away.

Míriel Therindë started humming and laid the first stitches of the weft.

**Author's Note:**

> Celebrimbor's rescue is the one told in [Impure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5065393).
> 
> Fëanor has been a baby in Míriel's womb since the time he died (which is the #1 creepy thing about this verse to me), so they basically act as one spirit/Míriel has the strength of two spirits.
> 
> The title is from the song "Fire Walk With Me" by Fantômas.


End file.
